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my refusal to wear a bicycle helmet

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

To all the helmet-believers who constantly communicate with me concerning loved ones & people they know who were wearing bicycle helmets that saved their lives,

The dreadful circumstances you describe do not make you better judges of safety protection & in fact could even be said to say make you worse ones.

It never ceases to amaze me that not only have Australian governments not detached themselves from your raw emotion in their policy-making, but that they've continued to disregard any cogent proposal to revoke mandatory bicycle helmet law despite the mountains of evidence that they've never worked.

Manadatory bicycle helmet laws are a blatant failure, & I intend to continue to dress for cycling as I choose, & in the manner I see fit.

You probably know about this but it's some more useful info just in case:

http://www.egms.de/static/en/meetings/dgnc2004/04dgnc0134.shtml

It is an analysis of head injuries done by some German researchers. I cannot access the full article so cannot comment on their methods.

Important to me were the sources of head injuries. 10% of them suffered a bicycle traffic accident. Other types of trauma mechanisms were related to leisure time (36%), housework (28%), business (15%) and non-bicycle traffic accidents (11%). In other words, bicycle traffic accidents constituted the smallest proportion.

Further, they found that while "89% of the cyclist were not wearing helmets. There was no significant difference concerning the level of head-trauma due to bicycle accident between cyclists wearing a helmet and others."

Thanks for that, Edward! I just don't understand why our governments resolutely refuse to compute data that is universally available - sigh

Currently I'm awaiting to see what response I get from the ACCC as a result of my letter of complaint - will they agree that SAI Global, Standards Australia & the NSW Government have misled and deceived Australian consumers, including myself, with unsubstantiated claims that are still in scientific dispute?...